San Gennaro does not work a miracle: cholera epidemic and leap year, the incredible coincidence of 1835



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It was truly a fatal omen, also because the coming year would also be a leap year. In that 1835, Cardinal Filippo Giudice Caracciolo was forced to suffer the whims of San Gennaro. At the most anticipated appointment, that of September 19 at the Duomo, the blood melted at ten o’clock. It was not until nine o’clock at night that the cardinal stirred the liquid from the vial among the cheering crowd. Much worse happened the following December 16, at the “secular miracle” appointment, when the blood did not melt at all. Bad warning, interspersed two months before by an earthquake in Calabria with 120 deaths that worried King Ferdinand II of Bourbon, finally waiting with his wife María Cristina de Saboya for an heir after three years of marriage.


A sign of disaster was feared and disaster was feared. In 1836 the terrible “Asian disease” arrived in Naples, which for at least four years had been causing massacres throughout Europe. It was cholera, the first pandemic of contemporary times that spread to Naples in September and caused more than five thousand deaths in the first phase to repeat itself, after a brief pause, in 1837 with a second phase that claimed more than thirteen thousand victims. . San Gennaro was angry at Naples and the terrible tragedy of an unknown disease with no known remedies was also attributed to his failed miracle the year before. What happened was so striking that the cardinal promoted a study on the “cholera of 1836-37 and the account of the failed miracle of San Gennaro.” Rarities of history that repeats itself: jump 1836 like ours 2020; San Gennaro did not perform the miracle then and this time it was not allowed either.

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The records of the canons of the Cathedral keep the hours, days, duration of the delay of the miracle, or the dates of the lack of dissolution of the blood of San Gennaro, “yellow face”, popular saint, the only one who can boast of a pact with the city signed by a notary. In 1751, Pope Benedict XIV was invested with the case of non-dissolution in which the action of Freemasonry was accused. In May 1710, the chronicler of the time wrote that “although it remained hard and dark, the blood also filled the entire blister, which has never happened again.” And even in that case the apostolic nuncio in Naples, the Pope’s ambassador, warned Clement XI on that occasion that the Neapolitan people feared disasters and earthquakes. But the Calabria shocks with hundreds of victims turned out to be just fake news of the time.

Other cases of non-dissolution of blood with related disasters are closer to us: 1973, year of cholera in Naples and Puglia that caused 21 deaths; 1980, the gloomy date of the Irpinia earthquake with thousands of victims. Even the election of the first communist mayor of Naples, Maurizio Valenzi, was anticipated by San Gennaro, who in 1975 performed the miracle late. Powerful new and old in the city have always looked for the good omen of the miracle of San Gennaro. The French general Jean Etienne Championnet, who entered the city after two days of violent fighting against the populace of Naples, in 1799 even wanted Cardinal Giuseppe Maria Capece Zurlo to anticipate the miracle among the Te Deum of the cathedral until January 22 . When on May 4, 1861, two months after the annexation of Naples to the kingdom of Italy, San Gennaro performed the miracle, the liberal newspaper “l’Opviso” wrote with irony and a sigh of relief: “San Gennaro is not dissatisfied with Vittorio Emanuele and the new kingdom of Italy. It means that San Gennaro is not Bourbon, nor republican, nor murattist, he is a constitutional saint, not a reactionary. “A ritual and a devotion, which also provoked a parliamentary interrogation in 1905. The republican deputy Giuseppe Gaudenzi expressed concern about the presence of the commander of the X Corps in the Cathedral. And he questioned the government to find out “if it approves the intervention of the commander for the so-called miracle of the boiling of the blood of San Gennaro.” a unique cult in the world.

Last updated: 10:15 © REPRODUCTION RESERVED



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